You can’t point to a day
Last week at our Meetup, we had Todd Stanton speak to the group about using relationships to grow your business. He shared a ton of great insights, but one piece of advice really stood out to me.
The main focus of Todd’s talk stressed the importance of always keeping up with the people in your network. Check in with them, see how they’re doing, and see what value you can add to their lives. It’s a slow process to build up, but can reap huge rewards down the road.
However, those “huge rewards” can be a bit vague to measure. If you reach out to people consistently year after year, and your business grows, you can’t point to a specific day that made the difference. Sure, you can maybe point to one particular person that made a difference, but even then it might have been due to the 14 times that you chatted with them over the last and there’s no telling which specific conversation did it.
It’s like if you floss regularly and get a good check-up at the dentist. Which day of flossing did the trick? Or if you only floss sporadically and get a bad check-up, which day of skipping caused the cavity?
In both cases, you’ll never know. It’s like Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said:
“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me”
Your activities make you, and the key to many things in life is to just be consistent. Stay connected to people, read great books, exercise, and always floss your teeth.